The electronics industry has become increasingly driven to meet the demands of high-volume consumer applications, which comprise a majority of the embedded systems market. Embedded systems face challenges in producing performance with minimal delay, minimal power consumption, and at minimal cost. As the numbers and types of consumer applications where embedded systems are employed increases, these challenges become even more pressing. Examples of consumer applications where embedded systems are employed include handheld devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), global positioning system (GPS) receivers, digital cameras, etc. By their nature, these devices are required to be small, low-power, light-weight, and feature-rich.
In the challenge of providing feature-rich performance, the ability to update the product's capabilities with advancements in a given industry to meet customer needs remains desirable. However, significant time in incurred as each design goes through the development process and reaches the market. Any reduction in the time-to-market for embedded processing products to meet the needs of the customer is considered beneficial. Accordingly, what is needed is a manner of reducing the time-to-market concerns for embedded processing solutions that attack particular application spaces. The present invention addresses such a need.